Every spring and summer, America’s school districts face a critical challenge: hiring a batch of new teachers.

For some districts, the first problem is finding enough educators to fill their classrooms. But for many others, the central issue is choosing among the candidates — and administrators are left to develop their own systems for using résumés and test scores to predict who will do the best job.

New research suggests that Los Angeles, at least, has found a better way.

In 2014, Los Angeles Unified School District redesigned its hiring process to carefully cull teaching applicants. Each prospective teacher gets several scores for measures like college GPA, a sample teaching lesson, an interview, and professional references. Candidates who earn 80 out of 100 points get passed along for consideration to school principals.

The paper, published through the group CALDER at the American Institutes for Research, found that teachers who scored higher made a bigger impact on student achievement, scored higher on the district’s evaluation system, and were absent for fewer days.

The research is the latest in a string of recent studies showing that the way schools make hiring decisions can make a small but meaningful impact on students — and that many districts could do a better job at it.

Read the full article on hiring new teachers by Matt Burnum at Chalkbeat